Don't blame Muslim schools for Britain's social problems

One of the schools Ofsted inspected recently was the Madani Girls' School, a private Islamic school in London's East End (Photo: WILL WINTERCROSS)

Last night’s Panorama about Islamist schools in Britain was disturbing and necessary, and a vital reminder of what public service broadcasting is all about.

I thought the Saudi Arabian curriculum’s guide to amputating thieves was a particularly nice touch, and so useful for preparing pupils for the modern labour market.

Contrast this with what they can learn in “normal schools”, such as the “sex” qualification for 11-year-olds that asks “outline two things it’s important to remember when using a condom”. There you have it in a nutshell – barbarism and decadence, the two sides of modern British life from its minority and majority communities.

The school’s anti-Semitism was particularly sinister, although predictable; as others have said before me, there’s a particular irony here in that Europe brought in large numbers of immigrants because of its Holocaust guilt – immigrants from among the most anti-Semitic countries on earth. In fact European history is like one of those Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone fantasy gamebooks from the 1980s, so that whatever path you take, it ends on the final page with everyone blaming the Jews. (Go back to Palestine! Get out of Palestine! Whatever!)

The programme was right to raise the issue of how Muslim and Evangelical Christian schools have managed to avoid inspections. And as my colleague Andrew Gilligan points out, the think-tank Policy Exchange has suggested tackling this problem by creating a definition of “extremist”. This includes advocating the killing of civilians, apologising for genocide, attacking British troops, denying Israel’s existence and anyone who might…

discriminate or advocate discrimination on the basis of religion, religious sect, race, sexual orientation or gender in any aspect of public life or public policy.

So while there should certainly be checks on Muslim schools considered to be promoting extremism, let’s be wary of what social liberals in the educational establishment call “extremist”.

It is also unfair to blame Islamic schools for segregation, as the programme seemed to imply. After the 2001 race riots a Government inquiry concluded that educational apartheid was responsible for wider racial segregation in the north of England, the result of which was a £250m (yes, £250m!) project to close Burnley’s segregated secondary schools and replace them with forcibly spanking new, desegregated ones.

And yet education does not cause segregation – demographics do. Many of these Lancashire ex-mill towns are heading towards a 70:30 demographic split, and in some cases 60:40 and even 50:50. As far as I know there is no city on earth so closely split between two groups that does not have very high levels of segregation (perhaps some evidence-based sceptics could provide me with evidence otherwise?).

Sure enough half of Burnley’s new schools were swiftly put in special measures. Which is fine, if you think the purpose of education is to integrate, rather to educate, but not so good for the boys and girls left illiterate and innumerate. (I prefer Theodore Dalrymple’s solution – grammar schools, so that at least the brightest Muslims and whites get to know each other, and an education.)

Compare these schools to some of Britain’s highly brilliant Muslim schools, such as Blackburn’s Tauheedul Islam Girls High School, an astonishing success story that takes girls from some of the poorest wards in the country and gets them to outperform the most privileged.

The reason for their success is probably that, unlike many local secular comprehensives, they are not highly expensive and inefficient child-minding services for instructing delinquent adolescents about equality and diversity, but traditional educational establishments with an old-fashioned monotheistic ethos that value the three Rs. In other words, what used to be called "British values".